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Parents Beware!

by Marsha Familaro Enright

The political New Left idealogues are after your children from pre-school to college.

Indoctrination is on the loose, at the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and at private schools such as Lexington Montessori in Massachusetts—it’s happening all over.

No longer are we to ignore skin color and focus on character.

The 1619 Project curriculum is everywhere in public-school systems. And in private preschools, children are taught to pay attention to their skin color for self-portraits to ensure their consciousness is raised about diversity. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with knowing the correct color, for accuracy, but teaching three year olds political ideology?

In the Wall Street Journal, Meghan Cox Gurdon’s “Jack and the Bean Counters: A Woke Children’s Story,” reports that publishers “make a fetish of highlighting the pallor or pigmentation of fictional characters….Publisher’s Weekly…find it necessary to report a young character is ‘pale-skinned’ and an older one is ‘brown-skinned.’” Publishers are rating books according to how many characters of what racial/ethnic background are in each book.

And researchers from Columbia and the University of Chicago “…sift through the past century of prize-winning children’s books to identify characters by sex, age and color…” The study is called “What We Teach About Race and Gender: Representation in Images and Text of Children’s Books.”

I guess they believe the number of times certain races and genders are shown determines what’s being taught. No mention of the ideas in the books—they don’t seem to matter.

A parent reported to me that at his private elementary school, his daughter’s fourth grade teacher wanted to use Ibram S. Kendi’s book, How To Be An Antiracist (published in large print so it’s easy for kids to read). The text includes comments such as: “Racism is the smog we breathe.” No discussing the facts and issues, it assumes a conclusion.

Fourth graders don’t have the abstract cognitive ability to comprehend and assess ideologies; putting this in the curriculum is equivalent to shoving it down their throats. Or, one might say, indoctrinating them.

Fortunately, the parent and a number of his cohorts were outraged about it and strongly objected to its use. They got some relief: the book isn’t going to be read, but the teacher “wants to use some parts of it.”

Then we have the private Grace Church High School in Manhattan refuse to allow their teacher, Paul Rossi, bring in Brown University professor Glenn Loury for Rossi’s Art of Persuasion class. Loury is known for questioning whether systemic racism is the primary problem for the black community.

And in college, a professor berated a Cypress College student for calling police heroes. The student, who maintained a highly civil tone and manner, could hardly get his opinion out because of the professor’s irritated interruptions.

The professor said “So you brought up the police in your speech a few times. So, what is your main concern? Since, I mean, honestly … the issue is systemic. Because the whole reason we have police departments in the first place, where does it stem from? What’s our history? Going back to what [another classmate] was talking about, what does it stem from? It stems from people in the south wanting to capture runaway slaves.”

Britannica claims it was waves of immigrants from Europe, their customs and behavior, which led to the first police forces, in New York City followed shortly by other big cities.

But whether you agree with the professor’s opinion or the student’s, the problem is that the student was criticized for having a different opinion. This is going on in colleges all over the nation. I hear from students at many different institutions who tell me: “I just keep my head down, I hear political opinions in every class, science included, but I don’t say anything because I just want to do my work and I don’t want to be penalized for disagreeing.”

Finally, “Talking before the start of OPRF’s (Oak Park River Forest, IL High School’s) Feb. 26 board meeting on a live microphone, Gina Harris and Ralph Martire said they were proud to advocate for so-called “social justice” Marxist economic concepts.” Harris and Martire are professors from Roosevelt University who teach at OPRF also, reported West Cook News, April 26th.

“I mean, it’s all social justice. All day, every day, I get to talk about the things I love. I’m really living the life over here,’ Harris said.” 
She called social justice ‘a part of everything,” adding that she was teaching ‘middle school theory and practice’ to future K-12 teachers at Roosevelt.”

I shudder at what millions of children are being subjected to every day in their academic subject classes!

If you want your children to be taught in an objective, non-partisan way, you have to search very carefully.

I’ve known about this trend for decades and that’s why I created The Great Connections, where our method and our content emphasize and underscore free inquiry, reasoning from the facts, and independent judgment.

Try our Great Connections Conversations Online to get a taste of what we do.

Sign up for more insights and useful resources.

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